"The Paperboy" looks and feels like a trashy pulp novel. I haven't read Peter Dexter's original book but it may have been just that. It's told in flashback by maid Anita, (singer Macy Gray), and it deals with a murder and a possible miscarriage of justice. The murder, as it turns out, is really only a red-herring, (there are other murders to make up for it), and even the miscarriage of justice is virtually thrown away as a major plot point.
It's set 'in the past' in a place close to the Florida Everglades where racism is rampant. The paperboy of the title is the extraordinarily handsome Zac Efron, (who at least makes up in looks what he lacks in acting chops), whose job it is to deliver the newspapers his daddy prints. On the other hand, the paperboy could just as easily be Matthew McConaughey as his older brother, a reporter who has returned to the family fold to write a story about a man on death row whom he believes is innocent. He has another writer with him, a sophisticated black man from 'London, England', (he stands out like Virgil Tibbs in this backwater). The guy on death row turns out to be something of a neanderthal and is played brilliantly by John Cusack and he has a tramp of a girl-friend on the outside who he had never even met 'in the flesh', so to speak, (Nicole Kidman, terrific and giving the film all the sleazy kick it needs). It's she that Efron falls for in a puppy-love kind of way and it's this tiresome infatuation that makes up most of the film's plot.
In the end it shudders into some kind of life with a lot of unsavoury revelations and a double murder. It's all very watchable and there are some good soul numbers on the soundtrack and you may be inclined to think Kidman, (and perhaps even Cusack), were robbed of Oscar nominations but it's hardly likely to do much for director Lee Daniels' faltering career.
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